Devault, Ileen A

Professor

research

research and scholarship focus

  • Gender and families
  • Immigration and the Labor Force
  • Labor History
  • Labor rights
  • Organizing
  • Unions
  • Women and labor unions
  • Work and families
  • American Labor History
  • Gender Issues in Employment and Labor Unions
  • Social Mobility, Class and Clerical Work

  • Current Research: "United Apart:  Sex, Gender, and the Rise of Craft Unionism, 1887-1903"  (Under contract with Cornell University Press).- This project explores the relations between the sexes in unions between 1887 and 1903 through the use of case studies of strikes involving both women and men. 

affiliations

faculty appointment in

member of graduate field

other Cornell affiliations

service

current professional activities

  • ILR School Dean's "Academic Affairs Team," 1997-2000
  • Cornell University Academic Advising Committee, 1999-2000
  • Cornell University Faculty Library Board, December 1995-1998
  • ILR Dean Search Committee, December 1995-May 1996
  • FCR Committee on Academic Programs and Policies, August 1995-May 1998
  • ILR Strategic Planning Committee, Co-Chair, 1993-1995, Chair, Instruction Subcommittee
  • ILR Research, Publications, and Library Committee, 1990-1993, 1997-2000, Chair, 1991/92, 1999/2000
  • ILR Undergraduate Program Committee, 1994-1997
  • ILR Academic Standards and Awards Committee, 1987-1990, Chair, 1989/90
  • Chair, ILR Academic Integrity Hearing Board, 1988/89
  • ILR Faculty Committee to Respond to the Outside Review, 1987-1988
  • Cornell University Women's Studies Executive Board, 1987-2000.
  • Member, Steering Committee, 1991-1997, 1998-2000
  • Coordinator, Colloquium Series, 1995-1996
  • Chair, Women's Studies Curriculum and Advising Committee, 1989/90
  • Program on Gender and Global Change, Associated faculty member, 1987-2000
  • Course Development Committee for course on International Development and Women, 1989-1992     
  • Professional Activities:
  • Chair, Philip Taft Labor History Award Committee, 1999 to present; Member, 1993 to present
  • Member, Elliott Rudwick Prize Committee, Organization of American Historians, April 1995-April 1997
  • Series Co-Editor, Literature of American Labor Reprint Series, ILR Imprint of Cornell University Press
  • NEA-NY Summer Leadership Conference, "History of Women in Unions," August 1990      
  • Women's History presentation to Ithaca High School history classes, March 1990
  • Consultant, Exhibit Project, "Women at Work in Ontario County, 1870-1925," Ontario County Historical Society, Canandaigua, NY, 1990
  • Teleconference for PEF members, "The Role of Blacks in the Labor Movement," September 1989

background

educational background

  • Ph.D. (History), Yale University 1985
  • M.Phil. (History), Yale University  1981
  • M.A. (History), University of Pittsburgh  1979
  • A.B. (Women's Studies), University of California, Berkeley 1978

publications

selected publications (listing in progress)

  • "Narratives Serially Constructed and Lived: Ethnicity in Cross-Gender Strikes, 1887-1903," ; Supplement to International Review of Social History. ; forthcoming in 1999
  • "'To Sit Among Men'" Skill, Gender, and Craft Unionism in the Early American Federation of Labor,"edited by E. Arnesen et al ; Labor Histories: Class, Politics, and the Working-Class Experience ; Universtiy of Illinois Press ; 1998
  • "United Apart: Sex, Gender, and the Rise of Craft Unionism, 1887-1903" ; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press ; forthcoming
  • "'Give the Boys a Trade': Gender and Job Choice in the 1890s," ; A. Baron (Ed.), Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor ; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press ; 1991
  • Sons and Daughters of Labor: Class and Clerical Work in Turn-of-the-Century Pittsburgh ; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press ; 1990